With between 1/4 and 1/2 American “adults” saying January 6, 2021, events – that millions watched live, the Pentagon said was “insurrection,” that injured 150 police, that trashed the Capitol – did NOT really happen as portrayed by world wide mainstream media – we’re at the point whether “the United States” will remain “united.”
Kurt Andersen’s “Fantasyland”: “We have passed through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. America has mutated into Fantasyland>” Kakutani’s “The Death of Truth”: “We live in a time when the very idea of objective truth is mocked and discounted..” People are reading and rereading Orwell and Arendt; “What Orwell Didn’t Know,” “Twilight of Democracy,” “Surviving Autocracy,” “Authoritarian Nightmare,” books on fascism and tyranny.
The Founders believed freedom of speech and press enabled Americans to discuss. They didn’t consider there’d be more than one definition of “truth,” or the “alternative facts” rabbit hole. Without belief in unspun truth – as in “smoking gun” [unedited] videos – it might be over forAmerica.
In 1974, an American president resigned when confronted by members of his party with “smoking gun” evidence. In 2021-202X American Fantasyland, “smoking gun”evidence – in many forms – is no longer enough. If some “believe” their “trusted sources” say a “witch hunt” by demonic “enemies of freedom” – then what the rest of the world sees/believes is not valid. They “know” the “real truth.”
In 1787 Philadelphia, at the Constitutional Convention’s end, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic, or a monarchy?” Franklin’s response: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
THE 2022 question: do enough Americans WANT. to keep it?????
In “A Republic, If You Can Keep IT,” former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren: “It seems clear to me..democratic rights, privileges, freedoms..-can survive only as long as those who exercise them do so in an informed and conscientious manner. History offers many examples of experiments in democracy that perished when the people. because of the kind of ignorance that encourages indifference, neglected the obligations of citizenship.”
The number one “obligation” is finding real, unspun, truth. President Gerald Ford: “Truth is the glue that holds government together.” Lenin: “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Hitler: Belief is harder to shake than knowledge.”
Propaganda master, Joseph Goebbels, if he is able, must be excited by the 2021 “Reichstag Fire” in Washington. Goebbels” masterpieces didn’t have to fight video evidence>. The 1/6/21 BIG LIE surpasses anything he tried.
IF the members and supporters of one political party continue insisting 1/6/21 was “just a tourist’s misadventure” – it might be over. No democracy [America?] can survive 1/4 to 1/2 its “adults” accepting and promoting such Orwellian tale, despite overwhelming evidence.
This same party passed undemocratic voter restriction laws “ensuring election integrity” [Orwell!], enabling its politicians to negate votes [Stalin: counting votes!], is becoming MORE fascist [14 characteristics!]; insists loss by 7 million votes constitutes a “stolen election” [without proof!]. Are. YOU. concerned? If not, it IS over.
In his 2007, “Broken Government,” John Dean ended with a quote from “a lifelong Republican” who twice voted for Bush & Cheney, because he knew them personally: “Just tell your readers..you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican Party from long experience..knows all the key movers and shakers..has a bit of advice: People should not vote for ANY Republican, because they’re dangerous, dishonest, and self-serving.. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government truly is broken..another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under Republicans and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable.” Those words were confirmed, 2017-2021.
Several other former Republican operatives have written things like this: “The current Republican Party should be burned to the ground>”. A 25-year key elections operative wrote his expose on the Republican Party thus: “It Was All A Lie.”
In the last 20 years, we’ve had Lifton’s “Losing Reality”; MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains [The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America]”: Stanley’s “How Fascism Works [The Politics of US and Them]”: Levitsky & Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die”: Yang’s “The War on Normal People”: Frances’ “twilight of american sanity”; Stewart’s “The Power Worshippers’: Mayer’s “Dark Money [The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right]”; double Pulitzer winners Bartlett & Steele’s “The Betrayal of the American Dream”: Pulitzer winner Smith’s “Who Stole the American Dream?”: Frank’s “The Wrecking Crew [How Conservatives Rule]”; Anderson’s “One Person, No Vote [How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy]”; Lafer’s “The One Percent Solution [How Corporations Are Remaking America One State At A Time]”; Andersen’s “Evil Geniuses [The Unmaking of America]”.
These books are “the tip of the iceberg.” There are monthly magazines like “Mother Jones” and “The Atlantic” that discuss the last 40 years’ BIG LIES. A MUST read”Barton Gellman’s “January 6 Was Practice” article in Jan/Feb, 2022 The Atlantic. It contains SPECIFIC documentation on what the Trump team is planning for 2021-2024: the hollowing out of the ENTIRE American electoral system – using the outdated Electoral College weaknesses, replacing ANY honest elections officials, allowing state legislatures to throw out valid votes, etc. This is a. MUST Read, if you care.
For perspective: check unspun IRS income data, 1947-79 – versus – l980-2022 [consensus: the top 1% has STOLEN about $10,000 EVERY year from the bottom 90%]. The U.S. national debt, 1789-1980, was less than $1 trillion on January 1 1981. Reagan, Bush II, Trump reverse Robin Hood tax cuts blew up the debt – every one of them a BIG LIE. Check buying power for the “average” worker: DOWN since 1973. Check WHO moved “American” jobs “south,” first to “right to work’ [for less!] states, then to Mexico, then to anywhere on earth to escape taxes, regulations, fair wages.
The 2016-202X BIG LIES are only the latest in a 40-year string. BUT – the 1/6/21 BIG LIE is special. This is THE TEST. Believe this fairy tale – it is over. This one is different, it struck at the very heart of any democracy: an election. It was/is special because: the overt part happened live; special because confessions of WHY they were there, guilty pleas; because 150 police were injured trying to protect American democracy; because, for the first time in America, the loser [by 7 million votes!] instigated a COUP attempt – a coup attempt still being fleshed out with more evidence.
For additional perspective, read two articles. Lynn Schmidt’s “Yes, Jan. 6 really was a big deal” [1/6/2022; St. Louis Post-Dispatch]. Pay attention to what Republicans are trying to do at local and state levels. “It’s the counting stupid.” Soviet dictator Stalin: “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.”!!!!!
Read Trudy Rubin’s “Foreign friends and adversaries believe U.S. power is in decline” [1/6/22; Philadelphia Inquirer]: “..has shaken our allies’ faith in America’s future…’Trump has handed authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping a huge gift: a United States divided, internally preoccupied, and contradicting its own democratic ideals’..”
In the last 40 years a huge alternative network and universe has been created on the political-economic-social-religious right. Their stated goal: create a plutocratic theocracy. They have unlimited financial resources. Former employees of a reactionary billionaire said his goal was to crush the one thing that could control him: the federal government. One leading fundamentalist “Christian” wanted a strict Calvinist system in which the death penalty applied to adultery, blasphemy, astrology, homosexuality, striking a parent, women not virgins at marriage.
January 6, 2021, was “a big deal” for actions, but more so, for what the end goal was: to acquire the power to radically change America – to a plutocratic theocracy. The plans for this have been confessed, often in print. People behind this have been working “the long game” for 50 years. A major goal: rewriting the rules – legal, economic, political>. As YOU. read this – it is going on RIGHT NOW, maybe in the state where YOU. live.
Yes – all this sounds like fiction. Remember, the German Jews in the early 1930s said, no, it can’t happen here, Germany is too civilized. Then remember this: the first top 1%/corporate coup against a Democratic president happened in 1933 [Feb. 15, 1935 McCormack-Dickstein Committee report]. Remember “American” corporations supported the Nazis before and DURING WW II [Higham]. Remember an “American” corporation’s technology was used by the Nazis to run their empire – that company received payoffs DURING WW II [Black]. Remember “American” companies did NOT pull out of Hong Kong after China violated a treaty.
How this infamous episode ends is up to. YOU, dear friends. If. YOU don’t care enough to keep the American democratic republic experiment going – IT. WON’T. Accept these BIG LIES. means YOU. don’t care.
The perps behind the plan to steal. YOUR. country. are betting you’ll be too confused [the Fox propaganda network]; too apathetic to stop them. Are they right?
With Justice For All 